Taihoku Camp POW Memorial #6, Taipei
Located in Taihoku (now the capital Taipei), Camp No.6 was the main camp in the capital area, and one of the most significant POW camps in Taiwan. The first group of men to be interned at Taihoku arrived in November 1942 from Singapore upon the hellship ‘England Maru’. Consisting of mainly British POWs, the men imprisoned here between 1942 and 1945 were instructed to build a memorial park and a man-made lake for the Japanese, as well as farm and work in railway repair depots. Only ever peaking at around 500 men on average, the Taihoku Camp was mainly used as a transit camp for men moving to Kinkaseki and in the later years, Japan and Manchuria. Following the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the remaining men at Taihoku were evacuated on the 6th of September. In total 74 men died while imprisoned at the camp.
In 2000, the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society located in an empty field the place the camp stood during World War II. Following the construction of the ROC Ministry of Defence’s headquarters on the site in 2009, it was agreed a memorial would be erected to honour those who worked and died at Camp No. 6. The memorial was unveiled on Remembrance Day 2011 in front of a crowd that included a former Taiwan POW (Gunner Ken Pett), the family members of other Taiwan POWs, the Ministry of Defence and other international dignitaries.